1. Field
Exemplary embodiments of the present invention relate to a semiconductor device for controlling a memory device and an operating method thereof, and more particularly, to a memory device capable of recycling a storage space of a memory device, a system including the same, and an operating method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
A flash memory is a type of a nonvolatile memory device and is generally controlled by a control structure referred to as a flash translation layer (FTL).
Basically, a flash memory device may not overwrite data. Therefore, in order to write new data at the same physical position, existing data must be erased first. In general, a program operation is performed in a page unit and an erase operation is performed in a block unit (including a plurality of pages), so that valid pages and invalid pages may coexist in one block.
For example, a conventional flash memory using page level mapping first selects a victim block of which a storage space having invalid pages is to be recycled, and applies a garbage collection technique to the victim block, thereby preventing the storage space from being wasted due to invalid pages.
In the conventional flash memory, however, when the storage space is uniformly recycled according to one method (e.g. garbage collection technique), the time cost may be wasted for the operation to of recycling the storage space. Thus, the performance of a memory device or a system including the memory device may be degraded.
Therefore, there is a demand for a technique for recycling a storage space while minimizing the performance degradation of the memory device or the system.